10 Movie Scenes That Took The Most Amount Of Takes Ever

6. Jesse Eisenberg & Rooney Mara Argue...99 Times - The Social Network

Though David Fincher isn't quite in the Kubrick-tier of filmmakers who relish torturing their actors with repetitious takes, he does adhere to a similar filmmaking mantra that extensive takes are required for actors to discard their actorly inhibitions and perform a scene as though it were real.

Jake Gyllenhaal famously struggled working with Fincher on Zodiac, frustrated that the director would have him shoot dozens of takes only to delete the last 10 from the digital camera system in front of his very eyes.

But that's nothing compared to the insanity Fincher put Jesse Eisenberg and Rooney Mara through while shooting the stunning opening sequence to The Social Network, a five-minute back-and-forth of increasingly acidic dialogue between Eisenberg's Mark Zuckerberg and his girlfriend Erica.

Fincher had the actors perform 99 takes of the scene over two days before deeming himself satisfied, which reportedly made the studio incredibly nervous given that shooting nine pages of pure dialogue should never take this long. But Fincher explained his rationale quite succinctly himself:

"I look at it this way: You’re gonna bring all this equipment, you’re gonna bring all these people, you’re gonna fly them all in and put them up in hotels...Then the actors have to have their time to fall face-first into it. Rather than say, 'Okay, we’ll do two, and let’s move on,' it seems like such a waste of talent to get somebody’s second or third or even fifth or sixth thought at something."